A long overdue tour of everything going on at the homestead...Peter and I have been working hard and expanding gardens and adding new animals to the farm.

Today the Japanese beetles showed up. This year we are slightly more ready than last year, and we actually hired 4 farm employees that will be here in a little over a week. We planted "trap crops" to attract the beetles away from the crops we want to protect...amaranth and lots of zinnias. Problem - trap crops are not in full bloom yet, so not trapping anything. I caught a bunch to try to feed them to our chickens. The chicks were interested, but the beetles' crunchy texture

Sad and good and hard and productive day here on the homestead... As we anticipated, it is possible to lose baby chicks and indeed we did today. This little chicken nugget was one of our mystery birds and never quite got the hang of drinking and eating. We tried to help, but it was very weak and slipped away this morning after a last-ditch effort to revive it. We buried it in our homestead cemetery with our feral cat, Finnbogi and the Bina bees. However, homestead life goes o

Part-time homesteading and vacations looks an awful lot like more work, but Peter and I are enjoying our highly anticipated spring break week together at the homestead. Today we built a Hugelkultur for our remaining potatoes...we had 50 pounds to plant and ran out of room in the raised beds. So, we have soooo many potatoes and will need volunteers to help us eat them all this fall! BTW, hugelkultur is a form of gardening that Peter stumbled into that uses dead wood (which we

Some days are just a mix of really hard and really exciting... Peter and I had to say goodbye to our sweet Finnbogi (the first feral cat that befriended us) today. She showed up at the homestead a few days ago with a severe leg injury. She recently recovered from another severe injury, and we knew she was the outcast amongst the feral cat community and would often show up looking rough around the edges. She is at rest now. We buried her next to the bees. That's the really ha

Not much to say about this other than it is just a part of our fall routine... Join us as we get our garlic planted (in super-speedy fashion) for next year! Our garlic is from Keene Garlic . Great products with great resources for anyone who wants to grow beautiful garlic!

“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” — Hippocrates “A sad soul can be just as lethal as a germ.” — John Steinbeck...

In a scene in the 1990's movie "Father of the Bride," Steve Martin's character loses his cool in the grocery store....as he rips out the...

Well maybe not actual farming, but we are prepping to bring down more creepy crawlies to the homestead this weekend. ore creepy crawlies...

This week, Peter and I launched a YouTube channel. We hope it will offer a way to share insights into our processes and strategies for...

Japanese beetles love our gardens and orchard. They have made quick, destructive work of our apple trees, beans and zinnias...apparently...

A rainy-ish Saturday is a good reminder of how much our watering gig here at the homestead has changed for the coming growing season....

Bee check complete! Alright, so this is intense stuff...I am glad Peter was here for this hive check. We made sure the colony was doing...

Successful bee transfer to our homestead! Peter reports no bees or apiarists were harmed in the process. This family of bees will be...